Mated to the Alien Alpha

"You're full of shit, Ziggi. My new tatt doesn't look like text from a crappy printer. It's based on Otzi the Iceman's ink. This stuff has history."

I looked at the black bars on the back of Carlos Rivera's neck. All I could think was lame. "This is like a step above tribal tatts, is all I'm saying, my dude."

Carlos adjusted the volume on his bass. "Whatever. You have pink hair and a rainbow on your ass."

"Hey," I said. "My rainbow isn't a rainbow, it's a moonbow. That's why it's in black and white. Moondust is my middle name. Ziggi Moondust Collins. It has meaning, it's not a badly inked bar code!"

"Would you two shut it? I'm trying to get in the zone," Spike said. He twirled his drumsticks in the air.

I plugged my guitar into its amp. "Right." I turned to Carlos "Hotsauce" Rivera. "Forget what I said. Your new tatt is cool." (It wasn't.) "We good?"

Carlos nodded, wary. "Whatever. I guess."

On that discordant note, the Iguana Knees jammed.

Cyrus wandered in halfway through our set, smoking pungent weed in his mushroom shaped bong. This one smelled like a dank skunk. He scoured the floor of Carlos and Spike's garage. Cyrus found a rusty nail and a dented bottle cap.

"Would you guys mind if I kept these?" Cyrus yelled over the blare of my riff, pocketing his newfound treasures.

Carlos eyed Cyrus' toned arms. I wasn't exactly immune to them either.

"Sure thing, man," Spike shouted over my solo, making a V with his drumsticks. "Mi casa is your casa."

"Stop speaking Spanglish Spike, you're rage-murdering my ears," Carlos muttered, plucking at his bass.

"Shut up, Hotsauce," Spike laughed.

"Whatever, dude," Carlos sighed.

Cyrus fiddled with the bottle cap. "Thanks, most gracious of hosts. I'm just here to enjoy the ambience." Cyrus smiled his lazy smile and settled into the threadbare couch near the entrance. He closed his eyes and took a drag from his joint. Exhaling, he picked at a thread in the couch. "Music is like a flower, y'know? Petals of it unfold to engulf us, and soon, we are drowning in its liquidus, seeping nectar. The Rosarium Philosophorum of old, nigredo burnt into rubedo gold!"

Spike and I shared a look. Enamored, Carlos nodded. "Yeah, that's something like Otzi the Iceman would say. You can't tell me a bog body frozen for thousands of years wouldn't be a wise man, like a bona fide Dalai Lama or something."

"Or freezer burned," I muttered.

Carlos gave me the evil eye. I gave him the middle finger. As usual, we were fighting.

Set over, we packed up and parted ways. I ferried my stoned roommate back to our apartment, wondering the whole time if the tattoo on my ass really was just a rainbow.

At home, I floated through a sea of Cyrus' junk to my room, determined to pen the final lyrics to our new set. I was just reaching the bridge, where the suburban dad from our concept album commits suicide with a George Foreman grill in Loudoun County, one of those starched collar and chino clad multimillionaire Washingtonians in ugly outdated 90's era McMansions, when Cyrus' drilling from his makeshift studio broke my concentration yet again.

"Ugh." I crumpled up the eleventh version of my lyrics and tossed them into the wastebasket.

The drilling continued. I banged my head against the desk, wondering how I would ever sleep tonight with Cyrus working in a stoned haze on his newest art project.

I looked into the mirror hanging from my inspiration board and spoke to my baggy-eyed reflection, my bright pink bangs askew: "Get it together. You're days away from performing your new set. You're a broke musician. Do the thing broke musicians do and write a killer song."

Despite my best efforts, no inspiration came.

The drilling grew louder. The girl in the mirror was on the verge of breaking, ready to kick her roommate out, wondering why she had ever let him move in in the first place.

It began innocently enough. I was short on rent for my small two-bedroom in Bent Tree Apartments, and my old roommate had just shaved his head and joined one of those totally not legit completely white Hindu monasteries in Annandale without any ethnic people, just a bunch of kombucha drinking Hare Krishna weirdos, so I put up an ad on Craigslist for another occupant.

Cyrus was the first to respond: a tall, quiet nineteen year old prodigy with long, loose ringlets of cornsilk hair like something from a romance novel and skin like ice in shadow. I had initially liked him because he said he was an artist. It also helped that Cyrus, as I said, looked like something from a romance novel, one with like a millionaire playboy on the cover or like maybe a hot Viking warlord. Maybe that was kinda dumb, but that's what I instinctively thought when I first saw him in all his glorious hotness. Harlequin had, after all, stolen my high school years, besides the Beatniks and Edgar Allen Poe.

Cyrus had proven soft-spoken and charming when we met up in the local library. His fingers had been stained with paint and he was dressed in all white, down to his Doc Marten's. I thought his paint-spattered clothes an endearing quirk.

Things were roses for the first weeks - he kept to himself and his studio - but then I made the mistake of taking him to one of the Iguana Knees' after-parties, where Carlos, ever the Hotsauce, introduced Cyrus to weed.

From the moment Cyrus toked his first joint, he was hooked. The weed had a weird-ass manic effect: he scavenged for trash and channeled bursts of creativity into his found art. Me, it mellowed me out, but it turned Cyrus into a shinies-hoarding magpie. He would collect cast-off shoes from the gutter and cardboard from recycling bins, then go dumpster-diving for more materials. Come morning, the haphazard objects would be forged and soldered and sewn together into new creations and displayed in his studio at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria where they would be sold for hundreds of dollars, even thousands sometimes. Somehow, even now at 19, he could afford rent at the collective art gallery. I could barely afford a hoagie at Wawa.

In his ethereal gallery, there were mice made of broken batteries and bits of cotton, whole dioramas of little puppets forged from forgotten knickknacks that danced thanks to solar panels, even a life-sized panther built from scrap metal and tires that smoked water vapor when it growled and bared its fangs like an automaton if you pet it using touch sensors.

Over the course of a few days, Cyrus had turned into a regular pothead, smoking joint after joint, stinking up our apartment, with Carlos giving it to him for free because of how smitten he was with Cyrus. I had never seen weed work so quickly, not even that potent dispensary shit from Colorado. Cyrus worked furiously, so often that I never heard him pause for sleep. He welded, glued, sewed, and forged together new objects each day, crowding our miniscule apartment with his supplies. The living room was filled with boxes of broken things, our small kitchen near bursting with stacks of stuff.

Stuff was all I could call it. Stuff. I saw no potential in it and felt I was living with a hoarder, but Cyrus begged to differ ("It's all material, man.")

The night dragged, and the day dragged even more as I worked a double-shift at Java Lava. I managed to burn myself thrice on the coffee machine and was completely drained when I clocked out. After working the front counter all day, I could barely stand, let alone write a new song about a suburban WASP relationship on the rocks. Potential lyrics taunted my mind, mocking me as the sky grayed.

It was a short march out to my grandmother's hand-me-down Pinto, which was the exact color of manure. I grew up on a farm, so I knew what type of cow crap my Pinto was: it was the old shit left rotting in the fields, long after growing season was over. A car on its last legs that sometimes got stuck between gear shifts.

I'd named the Pinto Gerald because that seemed like the name of an old man with dementia. Gerald and me, we'd been through some rough patches, but I liked to think that in his senility, I was finally breaking him in.

I turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered. I drove down commuter-thick streets to my apartment, past cars full of young professionals making their way back from congested D.C.. Maybe I would be one of those commuters if I hadn't studied music and dance at college - maybe I'd actually have a career in this stupid job market instead of working at Java Lava. Instead, my band never took off, I'd injured my ankle and ended any prospects of a dance career and dropped out at eighteen - so, lo and behold, I ended up stuck in a dead-end job, a nineteen year old broke punk, barely able to afford rent, not to mention ramen. I'd adapted pretty well at making fancy ramen like bibimap level shit with ingredients from Dollar Tree. When I could afford it, I'd go to the biker dive bar at the border between Centreville and Fairfax proper and shoot pool with the old Harley riders where they never carded you. Cheap beer, cheap music, but soulful, rejuvenating relaxation over PBR. When I could really afford it, I'd go to Spaworld solo, the biggest Korean spa on the East Coast and soak in the sauna, get a body scrub until I was red, and zen out in the overly hot charcoal room or maybe the red clay ball room or soak up amethyst room if I was feeling extra. That was my happy place, no shit. Besides it's male prostitution ring, it had its nice parts.

Truth be told, Java Lava was one of the few places that would hire me. Apparently pink pixie cuts and eyebrow piercings didn't appeal to most employers. At least they couldn't see the rainbow – no, moonbow! - on my butt.

I lived in the cheapest part of mildly expensive Centreville, which was basically the East Coast's Koreatown besides Annandale closer in to DC, with an Asian mart every five blocks and a Korean megachurch every two. Besides developing an appreciation for K-Pop that Spike had fostered in me – his mother was Korean, and had taught him to cook amazing food, I loved the red bean pastries at Shilla Pastisserie and the Hawaiian bulgogi at Iron Age was outta this world.

As a wealthy suburb of D.C., Fairfax County was diverse as all get out, meaning the cuisine was spectacular. And no place was that beautiful soulful cacophony more evidenced than at the Costco down the road off Lee Highway. People of all strains liked to crowd Costco at 10:00 in the morning, eating free samples and navigating their extended families through the warehouse aisles speaking in melodious, foreign languages. I went there when I was bored and people-watched, mining the local community for album inspiration.

I was ruminating on the one time an elderly Chinese lady tried to force me to join her ballroom dance studio while I was in line for a $2 hot dog drink special when Gerald's engine sputtered on the back road that led past the bland park to Bent Tree Apartments complex. I knifed back to the present, pressing down on the accelerator to get over Gerald's hiccup. The Pinto shuddered and the vehicle began to slow down.

"Damn," I said, shifting down a gear as smoke came from the Pinto's hood. The engine whined as it died, and geriatric Gerald breathed his last.

I barely managed to pull over to the packed dirt side of the road, in the shade of a tulip poplar and a nest of redbuds, when the car died. I slammed my hands on the wheel and cursed imaginatively.

"Gerald," I pleaded, turning the keys in the ignition, "c'mon, you geezer, if Frankenstein's monster can come back to life, you can too!"

Despite my tough love, Gerald gave no reply.

I called Triple A. Leaves rustled like bones rolling in a grave, and rain began to fall. They said a tow truck would be here in ten minutes.

Triple A came and did its dirty work. They offered me a ride, but I had a better, hotter option that was local. Even if they annoyed the hell outta me.

I dialed Cyrus.

"Ziggi?" answered a voice like chocolate. "What a pleasant surprise. I was just washing my palette and listening to Prairie Home Companion. Sad to see Garrison Keilor gone, but his replacement Chris Thile is making a reputation – a very good one, might I add."

"Hey. My car broke down. Could you pick me up, Cy?"

"Oh. Sure. My pleasure, silkworm. You know, you create music, or silk, out of the raw materials of nature, cellulose and starch, or noise like ever-unfolding leaves. Anyways, where are you?"

Somewhere lost in suburbia in 2016, aimlessly going through the motions of a shitty life, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. Where was Green Day's Jesus of Suburbia? Was Cyrus my Savior Clad in Pentecostal Paint-smeared White?

I told Cy my location, and soon he arrived in a beat-up white VW beetle. He stepped out into the rain, an ivory umbrella in hand, dressed in his usual - milky skinny jeans, a snowy blazer, and shiny Docs like ice. His glacial hair shone like sunlight. The rain didn't even touch him. Magic, absolutely sheer wizardry. Maybe he was a Malfoy after all.

Cyrus smiled and tucked a loose blonde lock behind his ear. His hair was in a man-bun with a paint brush stuck in it, at the sight of which my heart palpitated. I adored man-buns. I adored art supplies. I didn't adore Cy. He had an undercut which made it even harder not to be attracted to the walking weed joint.

If only I could use alchemy to transmute his consciousness into that of my ideal man's and swap my soulmate's mind for his. Then I could live in non-matrimonial bliss with his clone, because marriage was only for reptiles - cold-blooded ones that dress in human skin, have 2.5 children, and incubate their eggs in nursery rooms whose walls are color-coordinated with the bassinet. Reptiles with dead eyes that eventually ended up eating their mates. Or wait, was that spiders?

Cyrus knocked on the window. "You alright? You're staring at me," he yelled into the glass. "Are you spinning notes of silk? Collecting inspiration from droplets of rain? Draining the marrow of the evening?"

I shook my head like a wet dog. "Oh? Sorry. Just thinking. Don't spiders eat each other?"

Cyrus opened Gerald's door for me and handed me a spare umbrella. His lips quirked. "Only if they're hungry. Must be hard to be a spider. How did the Itsy Bitsy Spider go? Perhaps I could rig a Rube Goldberg machine for my gallery based on that... with a spider made of sandpaper and titanium running on solar power like sunlight off a web... spiders have always reminded me of something rough yet steely, I am not quite sure where I am going with this..."

The rain was a constant drip, like a leaky faucet. Basically like Cyrus' monologue. My roommate's car was hotboxed. I choked on the wafting smoke. It was cluttered with art supplies. A smoked joint rested in the cup holder, and several extras were already lit, maybe for aromatics, who the fuck knew. Cyrus gave a goofy smile as he turned the keys in the ignition. I was in one of the less-serious levels of Hell – the one where dank artist hippies went.

We drove past Lee Highway to the end of the street, where our shabby apartment resided. Twisted trees grew around its perimeter. Cyrus parked.

"How long will it take to get your car fixed?" he asked softly. His voice was always soft. I had never heard that young man in question speak loudly in his entire life.

I sighed, squeezing a soda can on the floor between my feet. It was a Pibb. No one drank that shit but aliens, or Cy. "I think this is the end for Gerald. I'll sell him for scrap and beg my parents for their old farm truck. No one uses it, so it should be fine. It is stained in chicken and pig shit though..."

Cyrus nodded as we walked into the lobby, then took the staircase to the third floor. My stoned roommate unlocked our door.

"So, I think you'll like the new piece I'm working on. It's an interpretation of bee dances using cigarette butts I found on the sidewalk atop spray painted golden honeycomb pipes from the junkyard-"

I tripped over one of Cyrus' sawed-off pipes and went flying across the living room, landing askew. I heard something snap, and my ankle throbbed. I rolled onto my side, taking pressure off of my foot.

"Ow!" I clutched my ankle, which was beginning to swell.

Cyrus was by my side in a flash, his face strained. "Oh no. Oh, no no no. Sorry - let me see your foot."

"No, ow. This is enough. I've had it with your stuff. It has to go." I sobbed from the pain. "I think it's broken!"

He ignored my warning and rolled up my pant leg, then pulled down my sock gingerly. "It's not broken," he said, his voice soft, and placed his hand upon the joint where my foot bent out at an odd angle. "Just sad..."

"It is too broken, Cy," I whined. "Ankles can't be sad."

"Shh."

Heat seemed to flow from his palm to my ankle. The swelling went down, and the pain vanished. My foot bent back to its natural degree.

"What did you just do?" I said.

Cyrus looked at me with stoned, blank blue eyes. "What do you mean? Hey, where are we? Oh yeah, nirvana. The ephemeral edge of everything, condensed into a poem of nonexistence by Rumi's imaginal realms of prose... somewhere I have ventured before... the mundus imaginalis."

"My ankle was broken. Now it's not. How - what - how did you do that?"

"Man, am I high. What just happened?" Cyrus gently rolled my sock back up. "If this is nirvana, am I a bodhisattva?"

"My ankle, Cy, you fixed it."

"Buddha, I don't know what you're talking about. Like I said, your ankle was only sad. You were just shocked. That's all. It's happy now, here, have some satvia."

I narrowed my eyes. "No, I wasn't."

"Ziggi, Ziggi, relax man." He smoothed my pants leg. "Everything's about perception. It's what I explore in my art. People's beliefs about reality differ, and they're challenged all the time. Reality is a shifting thing. Like nirvana. A dream, perchance to dream, or sleep as deep as dead men dream."

"Look, I can't deal with your pot-fueled bullshit! My ankle broke. I don't care what you think you 'perceived.' It broke, and now it's better. That doesn't happen in any reality I know."

"Whatever floats your coat – er, boat. Yeah, boat. A coat's for when it's raining, and I guess it could rain on the sea, but that's where you humans float your boats. Er, us humans, yeah." He smiled faintly and helped me to my feet. "I made fettuccine alfredo from scratch for dinner. Help yourself to it. It's in the fridge." He began to walk back to his room.

Before he could disappear, I grabbed his shoulder - an act so at odds with his graceful nature - and pulled him back to me.

"Cyrus," I said, "what did you do?"

His smile faltered. All in white, he looked like a deflated swan. "Look, I have to finish up a piece for an exhibition at the Fairfax Town Hall this week. I promise I'll clean up the apartment tomorrow." He clasped my hand in his and held it for a moment. "Thank you for being so forgiving of my clutter. You're a great roommate."

My anger drained. How could I bitch at Cyrus when he was always a gentleman, despite his mess and 420 being his favorite number? "Thanks. But I could have sworn my ankle - never mind."

Cyrus let go of my hand. "Maybe it's the stress of your accident. I'll be in my studio. Knock if you need anything."

He left, whistling Starman. I stared at my faded poster of Ziggy Stardust on the wall, at whose concert I had been conceived. Thin White Duke or something. My parents never grew tired of telling me that particular story.

My ankle was still hot, like it had been plunged into a sauna. I ambled over to the kitchenette, fixed myself a plate of cheesy fettuccine, and popped it into the microwave.

Smoke hung like a veil over the Black Cat as my hands worked a riff on my Gibson. Carlos anchored the song with his bass line, and Spike drummed like an earthquake god. Cyrus stood on the fringes, taking a drag from something that was decidedly not a cigarette. Satvia, hashish, weed, who knew, but it stank mad and bad and dangerous to know like the essence of Byron.

We're the wasted youth of America's scum!

Fortune 500 and fools for the dumb!

Look at my shiny Washingtonian cock!

Suck off my money juice round the corporate clock!

We're America's rising 1%, seersucker fuckers,

We're signing prenups in McMansions expansions,

Drifting from dreams we held under Potomac Bridges

Sailing through the suburbs, 'til we're cold as fridges.

Aimless, listless, white painted roads, no friends.

9-to-5 flunkies who chug from the teat of Benjamins.

Just caged players, fakers, trenders, hipsters in dives,

The Beltway is soulless, we'd rather die than be alive!

Riff finished, I sang the bridge, then belted out the chorus three more times, summoning a chaotic picture of middle class ennui in the audience's mind. The mosh pit moved in frenzy as we performed the final piece from our concept album about midlife crises and the 99%'s suburban discontent. Spike drummed on his cymbals, the lights flashed, and Carlos let his final note echo. I strummed my guitar once more, then moved into a harmonic that played like a ghost across the room.

The crowd cheered.

"Thanks," I said, breathless, into the microphone. I then cribbed a line from Makem and Clancy that was always a crowd pleaser, modified for Millenials: "You guys are great. I want to bottle your blood and sell it or something. You're that fucking sweet. Like Pepsi or pixie dust or, or just like, I don't know, hot chocolate spiked with rum-"

Carlos edged over to the microphone, navy blue bass over his shoulder. "That's Ziggi, alright, with her vampire blood shit - she's a parasite. Be careful or she'll sip you right up." He slung an arm around me. "CDs are at the back, next to the band patches. Handmade my moi. Buy them, please, and feed me. Playing makes me mega hungry."

"Hey Hotsauce! Catch!" came an audience member.

Someone threw a hamburger at Carlos. He caught it, shrugged, and bit in. Ketchup clung to his lower lip.

"Gimme that - you don't know who or where in the hell it's from," I said.

"Screw you, Zig! That had my favorite hot sauce on it!"

"Gross!"

I took the half-eaten hamburger and threw it back at the audience. The crowd hooted.

The floor cleared. We worked with tech backstage to dismantle our set. I put my electric blue Gibson back in its case. The Gibson, christened Orpheus Zeta Jones, was my college enrollment present. Spike hauled my amp into his van. Cyrus pocketed bits of trash from the crowd: a dysfunctional red plastic lighter and used, waxy earplugs.

We crammed into Spike's van to drive back to Spike and Carlos's townhouse in Arlington for an after-party. Spike was at the wheel, and Carlos sat shotgun, with Cyrus and me squished in the back. I was not a small girl, quite the opposite, and my ample hips took up most of the space. My roommate, dressed in a white jumpsuit, smelled pleasantly of rain. His butt was bony and his hipbone dug into my thigh. His pot smoke refused to cling to him. Instead, it coated me, like disgusting perfume from a sewer full of junkies.

I tried to sit as far away from Mary Jane Man as possible.

Carlos put on the Dead Kennedys' "I Fought the Law" cover. "This is my jam," Carlos said, his labret piercing flashing in the streetlights. He sang along: "I BLEW GEORGE AND HARVEY'S BRAINS OUT WITH MY SIX GUN!/I FOUGHT THE LAW AND I WON!"

"Shut up, man," Spike said, then changed the track to the Pogues, cutting Carlos off mid-lyric. Some song from Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash played. A Rainy Night in Soho or something. I was too buzzed off performing and sativa smoke to tell.

Carlos slumped back in his chair. "Fuck you, Spike-up-the-ass."

Spike rolled down the window, letting the October air chill the car and clear the drug-fueled interior. "Don't start this, man. We both know the Clash's version is better. The Dead Kennedy's can't sing covers for shit."

Carlos blew air through his teeth. "What, and Shane MacGowan doesn't sound like a wino? Screw your tastes and screw your van. It smells like smegma."

Spike arched his brows. "You know what smegma smells like? How many dirty dicks have you sucked?"

Carlos lit a cigarette. "I only suck clean dicks." Carlos took a drag, then glanced back at Cyrus.

Cyrus hummed along to 'Sickbed of Cuchulainn,' oblivious to Carlos's attraction. We'd both talked about what Cy's dick must look like – Carlos and I usually shared the same taste in men, but my taste in women was mine and mine alone. Too bad there weren't any hot pianists from Sarah Lawrence in my band. There used to be – we dated, she broke my heart, and now she was in a much better band in NYC, with a record deal, much hotter girlfriend, and actual life.

Being bi like me wasn't that weird in Virginia, being gay was completely normal and run of the mill in D.C., straight was dime a dozen resembling overall population demographics, but Cyrus? What the hell was he? Only turned on by trash? An alien unaware of human sexual orientation? A dank garbage eating opossum in human form?

That was another thing about Cyrus - none of us could figure out my roommate's orientation. Maybe he was sapiosexual, if that was even a thing and not a 4chan joke – we were just plebs too dumb for his artistic genius. In the few weeks that I had known him, Cy had spoken of no significant other, but with his dramatic flair for dress in all white apparel, long flowing floofy hair, and androgynous looks, I suspected he might have something going on. Despite his sex appeal, Cyrus was sexless, showing no interest in anyone and continually laughing off Carlos's advances. Perhaps he was married to his art. That, or his weed.

"Hey, Ziggi, maybe you should grow a cock," Spike said, speeding past a yellow light. "It would hit two birds with one stone, solving your lack of a boyfriend and curing Carlos's lust."

I curled my lip. "I'm gonna pretend you didn't just suggest I become a dude and play with myself, or Hotsauce. God knows you two have enough testosterone for this whole band."

"Speaking of the band, I think we should change our name. 'Iguana Knees' is too grunge, and we're not grunge," Spike said.

"That's our problem. We never fucking know what genre we are," Carlos said.

I looked at the silent Cyrus, and my ankle throbbed. "Hey, I like our name."

Cyrus looked at me, breaking his reverie. "I think 'Iguana Knees' suits your aesthetic."

"Fuck. We dabble in so many styles, we're unclassifiable," Carlos blew smoke out the window. "We're punk one week, then glam the next. Remember that time I dressed up like David Bowie in Labyrinth for that set we wrote about Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market? Jareth or the Erlkonig or whatever, and Ziggi looked like friggin Sarah Brightman from Phantom of the Opera. That was miles away from our new album about a suburban couple's breakdown. One's Fairport Convention and the other's Green Day. I say we pick a genre and stick with it."

"Hell no," I said. "Why limit ourselves? Labels create sterility. Anyways, we're not trying to go mainstream. That's where sellout bands go to die."

"Not now, but eventually," Spike said. "Right now we only have niche appeal, mostly among Richmond anarchists and crust and pogo punks. A few Juggalos too from that clown acid set we did in high school. How are we supposed to market ourselves if we don't know what genre we are?"

"We'll figure it out," I said. "You can't just choose these things, they come to you, like the Oracle of Delphi. We're kinda like the modern prophets of music, that's our thing: the voice of our generation, or at least Millennials in the DC suburbs."

"Right..."

We pulled into Spike and Carlos's driveway and got out into the autumn-spiced night. They lived in a tree-lined cul-de-sac in a garden apartment in Clarendon in an area halfway between government subsidized housing and a youth mecca. The housing was cheap compared to most places in Arlington, filled with twenty-somethings and young families just starting out.

We settled into their living room with IPA beers from Trader Joe's and popped an old DVD of Mystery Science Theater 3000 into the TV. Cyrus sat in a bean bag on the floor while my bandmates and I sank cramped together into the single threadbare couch. I kicked my feet up on the milk crate table.

The imprisoned character and his robot sidekicks of the cult TV show were spoofing a B-movie about hostile aliens. The actors playing the aliens were poorly made-up, with green rubber lizard masks, and the 70's special effects were laughable. We munched on popcorn between sips of beer, chatting over the narration.

Only Cyrus was quiet, his eyes glued to the screen. He seemed almost solemn. The movie ended, and Spike turned off the TV.

"Man," Carlos said, "screw aliens. They creep the shit out of me."

I kicked my legs up on the table made of wooden crates. "Yeah?" I said.

Carlos nodded. "I used to watch the X-Files, and it messed me up. I was convinced that aliens were real, and that they had nothing better to do than abduct me and probe my ass."

"I'm pretty sure aliens don't want anything to do with a crusty bassist's butthole." Spike downed the last of his beer.

Carlos punched Spike, knocking his empty beer can out of his hands and down to the floor. "I'm not crusty, man."

I laughed. "You two are idiots. God, maybe we should make our new EP about aliens. No, alienation. Crust punks and their fight against the man!"

"I'm not crust punk, and the only dude I want to fight is the idiot sitting next to me," Carlos said, ribbing Spike.

"Don't touch me." Spike laughed. "I mean, look in the mirror - you're an anarchist, you play a jacked up bass, and you listen to crap like Venom and Motörhead, and you think the best fucking place in the world is dirty-ass Richmond. You're crusty."

"Yeah, fine, maybe, but you make it sound like my skin is flaking off and I haven't showered in twenty years," Carlos said. He looked at me. "Ziggi, that EP sounds like trite bullshit."

I frowned. "You always shoot down my ideas. What's your damage? Why can't we put a fresh spin on it?"

Carlos shook his head. "I don't know, it's just so overdone. The world doesn't need more angry white twenty-somethings railing against the establishment. Not that we're white. But you are, and you're the frontwoman."

"Railing against the establishment as entitled Millennials, eh?" Spike snorted. "Isn't that what we do? Admit it, we're derivative."

Frustration flared in my gut. "No, we're not! We're more original than 99% of the crap that's out there. People hear the Iguana Knees, and it means something to them! Think of our fans! What we stand for!"

Carlos squinted. "Iguana Knees. That name is like a dung stink bomb going off in my head. Can't we be Wombat Attack Squad or something?"

"You always go back to Wombat Attack Squad, don't you, Hotty Thotty Sauce?" Spike said, amused.

"Wombats don't attack things, Carlos, but iguanas have knees," I said, tired of my band-mate's nonsense. Sometimes they just drove me insane!

"How do you know legions of wombats don't attack things in Australia?" Carlos said, crossing his arms. "Have you ever seen a wombat? I sure haven't. They're not at the National Zoo or anything. They could be badass. With hidden superpowers, like me. Don't underestimate a wombat, Zig!"

"Wombats are herbivores, they have no need to attack things, save grass," Cyrus said. He took a drag from his blunt, then pulled out the broken lighter he'd collected from his pocket and flicked it repeatedly. No flame came on, but he was still enthralled. "Now magpies in mating season, they are quite efficient at terrorizing Australians."

Carlos narrowed his eyes. "I don't buy that," he said. "Ugh. Why can't we ever agree on anything? We can never go on tour like this."

I nearly choked on my stale beer. "Us? Go on tour? With what money and what roadies?"

"See?" Carlos said. "You say I don't agree with you, but you always hate my ideas, whether it's about going on tour or how awesome wombats are. You're like the frigging band dictator!"

"I am not!" I said. "Spike, back me up."

Spike burped, then gave a heavy shrug. "I'm too drunk to deal with you guys." He cleared some belched-up foam from his lips, then chugged down more cheap beer.

"Cyrus?" I asked, my voice trembling, to my own chagrin.

Cyrus bit his lower lip. "Well, I think your tour will come to you when you need it most. Maybe now's not the time. However, you could possibly divine the answer from the entrails of a fat National Mall pigeon. They are very in tune with the local ley lines. The answer would still probably be a no in the prophetic pigeon's spilled, shimmering guts on the green D.C. grass. Can't you three feel the flow of negativity in the atmospheric currents? Now is not the time. Yesterday wasn't, but tomorrow? Who knows."

"See?" I said. "The stoner sage agrees. At least... I think he does."

Carlos looked like he had a sour taste in his mouth. "Fine, whatever, have it your way. We can keep our shitty name and stay in the shitty suburbs and keep working our shitty jobs, living our small lives and never doing fucking anything."

I flinched. "I'm not the villain. Come on. I'm just trying to do what's best for us!"

"We don't need mothering," Carlos said, refusing to meet my gaze.

I sagged. "Fine, if that's what you think of me, I guess I'll just go. Cy?"

Cyrus pocketed his lighter. "Alright then. No fat pigeons I guess."

Spike stood, placing his hand on my shoulder. "Don't leave. Hotsauce is just being a tool because he's drunk off his ass. You're both oversensitive when you're tipsy."

I shrugged off his hand. "Whatever. I'm tired anyways."

Cyrus followed me outside like a shadow.

"Screw what Carlos Hotsauce Rivera thinks, I don't need him, I don't need Spike, I don't need anyone! I'm a fucking self-made woman!" I raged, looking up at the stars. The lone persimmon tree by the cracked driveway was bent with age and wind, its withered orange fruit ragged and half eaten by crows.

Cyrus dropped his smoked blunt and put it out with the heel of his shoe. "I think your ideas are valid."

"Thanks, I guess."

We drove back to Centreville in Cyrus' albino VW beetle on I-66. I was still waiting on my parent's spare truck to be fixed at the autobody shop before I could drive it. Until then, I was dependent on Cyrus and the Metro for rides.

Cyrus flipped through the radio stations until he settled on classic rock. I sat there, doubting the validity of my own ideas and my place in the band, despite Cyrus' reassurance. I finally broke the silence:

"Do you think I'm full of crap? Are my ideas stereotypical? I mean, I know I'm a caricature. I'm a pink-haired barista named Ziggi Moondust Collins conceived to Thin White Duke bops in a band that's falling apart." I watched the moon sail across the sky, feeling empty. "Blackstar Alien Overlord Bowie, come save me!"

Cyrus pulled into our apartment's parking lot. "I don't think so. You should simply let go of your worries," he said, his baritone voice soothing. "Both you and Carlos just drank a bit too much, my friend."

"Forget an EP about alienation. Maybe I should just write about aliens. I feel like fucking one!"

The radio began to play David Bowie's "Starman."

I gave a deflated laugh. "What, is the radio psychic? I was probably conceived to this song. Fuck EVERYTHING!"

I reached for the dashboard, squinting in the darkness to see which button to press to turn off the music. My index finger made contact with a red triangle-

"Ziggi, no, not that button!" Cyrus said urgently.

I pressed it without thinking. "What are you talking about? It's just the radio - whoa!"

A great clamor came from the VW beetle's engine. A white light pulsated on the dashboard, and my seat plunged backwards, taking me south with it. The windows darkened and the car thrust upwards, like the wheels had turned into rockets. We shot off the ground, into the air, careening past the trees-

"What the heck?"

Cyrus cursed in a bell-like, watery language, gripping the steering wheel bitingly hard as he navigated us through the air. "I can explain. Actually, it might be a bit difficult. Do the stars look like naked Salomes to you? Dancing seven veils... I hit the bong too much. And it doesn't help this car is hotboxed, the smoke is obscuring the navigation screen. Oh no. I forgot the button sequence. How do I steer high?"

We hit turbulence.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Fuck." I hyperventilated.

The radio became static, then was replaced by a voice speaking in the same sonorous, gurgling language. I shrieked as the sound's pressure made my eardrums near-rupture.

"Whoops," Cyrus said softly. He responded in the sea seraph tongue of foreign spheres and alien spacecraft.

A shimmering silver holographic screen appeared in front of him. Cyrus furrowed his brow slightly and turned a large green hovering dial. The screen enlarged, and foreign script scrolled across it. The symbols looked like the cuneiform I had once seen on Sumerian tablets in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

The radio's voice grew in volume. The speaker seemed to be asking a question in the slight uptick of their voice.

Cyrus bit his lip, pressed another button, then replied to the radio's query in the same language, so unnatural when it came from his human throat. It sounded like the voice of a dead god.

My stomach fell into my lap. I screamed, vomited, then screamed again, my puke flying around the car-turned-spaceship and turning the weed-soaked air sour. The velocity built, and my vision blackened.

Cyrus held my hand. "Ziggi. Ziggi? It's okay. You're safe. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let you press the launch button. This is all my fault, my sweet silkworm." He kissed my knuckles. "I apologize, my mother of pearl messiah. Think of this as the first leg of your solo tour."

His lips felt like silk. Why did he kiss me? Oh god, I'm facing more pressing matters than a fucking kiss!

"Launch button?" I said, then vomited a third time. My head spun, and the force of us flying through the air was like being pressed to death.

Cyrus wiped vomit from my brow. "It might be easier on you if you sleep this one out. Your body is fragile as a cherry blossom in repose on an April wind. Ephemeral, humans are. I'll explain everything once you wake up."

"What? No. No!"

He pressed a button on the holographic screen with a pianist's index finger - the moon of his nail like the Bat signal, calling out to me in crescendoing neap tides - and a fine mist seeped from the air conditioning vents. I inhaled the mist and was instantly calmed like an overdose of Ambien. Drowsiness lumbered into my brain and sat at the crown of my head. Sleep dragged me down through its depths.

I was no more.

Blackstar.

Black Sun.

Black Hole.

In the center of it all.